Monitoring is the continuous collection, analysis, and visualization of metrics and logs to understand the health and performance of a system. Monitoring tracks CPU usage, latency, memory consumption, request rates, error counts, and service availability. It provides real-time visibility into distributed systems and supports alerts when thresholds are exceeded.
Why it matters
Monitoring is essential for detecting issues early, maintaining reliability, and supporting incident response. Without monitoring, teams cannot identify bottlenecks, performance regressions, or failures across microservices and cloud environments.
Examples
Using Prometheus to record metrics, Grafana to visualize dashboards, or logging tools to detect anomalies. Lessons like Metrics and Dashboards cover monitoring fundamentals.